Don’t know what you got till it’s gone. Taste didn’t come back easy. It took so long.
Two weeks with a bad cold was long enough to remind me again of God’s fine sense of timing. My congested head had been dulling my sense of smell. But it was the exact day the 40 day sugar fast ended that my taste went away.
Poof. Gone. Taste no more. Cravings for chocolate and ice cream suddenly melted away.
I was my own science experiment last week.
No taste was new to me. So new, and strange, I felt I needed to prove it was really gone.
An onion may as well have been an apple or potato. I couldn’t taste- or smell- a thing. Fresh brewed, French roast coffee could have been weak breakfast tea. Nothing. Deep, clean minty fresh could have been baking soda Crest. Nada. But on a positive note, sweaty boys, bathroom smells, stinky feet also left no trace.
Besides increased gratitude for a range of flavors and greater compassion for those with colds, my tasteless days got me thinking about spiritual tastebuds.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! We know that verse. Some of us sing that verse. We love Psalm 34:18. We might even fast to rouse our spiritual tastebuds.
But if we’re honest, sometimes the Lord and his Word do not taste good. We consume countless other things that dull our hunger for God. Snacks, screens, and Facebook feeds can all take the edge off our hunger for the Bread of Life (John 6:35).
But that’s not the point.
Many of our tastes for nourishing foods- salads not Skittles- are acquired. It might take 15 exposures to accept the new food. Like the time goes into a prepping a good meal, getting spiritual nutrition takes work too. We’ve got to grind the wheat, and cultivate our spiritual tastes.
But that’s not the point either.
5 Takeaways From Tasteless Days
1. Dangerous
I drank sour half-and-half last week. But my tongue didn’t tell me. My husband did, after I put it in his. Our senses warn of dangers like fire, poisonous fumes, or rotten food. Spiritual tastebuds alert us to soul dangers. We need God’s Word warns us about sin’s dangers (Psalm 19:11). A Puritan named Thomas Brooks wrote, “O God, put my tongue out of taste for the bait of the devil.”
Oh that my tongue was as “put out of taste” for my own harshness and impatience with my sons as as my it was chocolate and ice cream last week.
2. A Sign of Sickness
Losing our sense of taste is a sign that we’re sick. If nachos were bland and even my brother-in-law’s storied Raclette cheese tasted tame, it’s no fault of theirs. If God’s Word tastes bland and seeking him seems dull, our souls are sick or injured. It might just be a little head cold like I had last week, or more serious, like the head injury that stole tastebuds from my friend Bob.
But the same God that gave us tastebuds can heal our sick ones. So feed the cold.
3. Keep Eating
Jonathan Edwards sad, “We must endeavor to increase spiritual appetites by meditating on spiritual objects.” Appetite comes with eating. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). That’s not just at conversion. It’s true every day of our lives. When you get up in the morning, my guess is… you must get faith again. And you get it from the Bible. That from John Piper. My mind said soup and tea were good when I couldn’t taste them. So I sipped them until I could.
Faith comes from the Word of Christ. So even when we don’t desire God, we keep eating.
4. Gradual Return
Taste is not all or nothing. There were those in-between, lukewarm days when coffee tasted like coffee more than tea or water, but blonde could have been bold. When I could tell an orange from a lemon but not from a grapefruit. Don’t despise the day of small things. Rejoice in little changes. And keep eating. Spiritually too: Eat when you feel like it. Eat when you don’t feel like it. Eat the Word until you feel like it.
Trust the process. Wait for the Lord to restore your taste, your joy (Psalm 51:12).
5. Restored By God
How are spiritual taste buds restored? Jon Bloom writes, The more you cultivate the habit of looking to and listening to Jesus, the more your spiritual taste buds…will be restored. We are transformed into people with healthy spiritual tastebuds- who love good and spit out evil-when we behold the glory of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18). And so we pray like Jeremiah prayed, “Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.”
And God may be gracious to you and restore your taste like he did for me last week. Now l give him praise.
That, actually, was the point.
Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became a joy and the delight of my heart for I am called by your name.
Jeremiah 15:16
